Godfrey Man Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison for Receipt of Child Pornography

Godfrey Man Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison for Receipt of Child Pornography

Adam B. Hill, 35, of Godfrey, Illinois, was sentenced Tuesday, September 15, 2015, in federal court to 10 years in prison for Receipt of Child Pornography, Stephen R. Wigginton, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois announced today. Following his prison sentence, Hill will be on federal supervised release for five years and will be required to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his life. Hill was also ordered to pay $24,000 in restitution to the victims, a $200 fine, and a special assessment of $100.

Court documents establish that on June 30, 2015, the Madison County Sheriff’s Department responded to a complaint of a suspicious man who appeared to be photographing young children while sitting in his vehicle outside a local swimming pool in Godfrey, Illinois. Based upon a description of the vehicle, including the license plate number, a Madison County Sheriff’s deputy identified the suspect as Adam B. Hill. The deputy made contact with Hill later that same day and confronted him about his activities at the swimming pool. During that conversation, Hill gave the officer consent to search his vehicle, during which the deputy recovered a Kodak digital camera and a metal pipe used for smoking cannabis. Hill was arrested and subsequently interviewed further regarding his activities at the swimming pool and his involvement in viewing and downloading of child pornography. Hill admitted that he had used file sharing programs to download child pornography on the Internet for several years and that he had a large collection of images and videos on his computer. During a forensic examination of Hill’s iMac computer, law enforcement agents recovered over 3,500 image files and 185 video files which contained child pornography.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “resources.”

This investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Crimes Task Force and the Madison County Sheriff’s Department. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Ali Summers.